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Katie Otterbeck: Shady tactics undermine Colorado's solar power

By Katie Otterbeck

Posted:
11/27/2015 07:45:45 PM MST

In this 2010 file photo, U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., center, helps Solar City employees install a solar panel on a home in Denver. The use of solar power in Colorado decreased on a per-capita basis from 2013 to 2014, according to the author. (Ed Andrieski / AP)

Colorado's potential to capture the sun's energy is almost as vast and equally as promising as the resource itself. I'll just come out and say it — the future looks bright for solar energy in Colorado. But all puns aside (for now), solar power is clean, affordable, virtually limitless, and has a remarkable level of bipartisan support among Coloradans. The revelation that a whopping 79 percent of Americans support the increased development of solar energy is enough to make headlines in our increasingly divided political climate.

That explains why special interests' attempts to block the policies that have helped spur the nation's solar boom have worked to bend the truth and — let's face it, what better place for a healthy dose of puns than a creative piece about energy issues facing our state — operate in the shadows.

In all seriousness though, a new Environment Colorado Research & Policy Center report shows that's just what the Koch brothers have done. "Blocking the Sun," written along with the Frontier Group, details how they, along with the American Legislative Exchange Council, and 10 other special interests, are running some of the most aggressive campaigns against solar energy in country, often behind the scenes or through front groups that offer the ruse of citizen support.

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This national network of utility interest groups and fossil fuel industry-funded think tanks provides funding, model legislation and political cover for anti-solar campaigns. Then, in state after state, electric utilities use the support provided by these national anti-solar interests, supplemented by their own ample resources, to attack key solar energy policies.

Since 2010, America's solar energy capacity has grown more than four-fold, generating increasing amounts of clean energy at increasingly affordable prices. Tradition is at stake here; our society has a longstanding tradition of reliance on the combustion of fossil fuels to power our lives. Also under threat if this renewable energy trend continues uninterrupted? Respiratory illness from air pollution, sea level rise, and climate change, to name a few. Oh, and the business model of fossil fuel interests and utilities that have a not-so-well-hidden monopoly on our energy policies.

These fossil fuel interests and utilities are working in at least 21 states and have earned some success for their efforts. Kansas made its renewable electricity requirement voluntary earlier this year, and Ohio suspended its own similar law. West Virginia effectively capped the number of homes and businesses that could go solar with restrictions on net metering.

And in Colorado, we've certainly had setbacks. Recent data from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory shows that Colorado could generate 360 times the electricity we currently use, just from the sun. With an estimated 500,000 roofs that could host solar panels, we could meet 20 percent of our electricity needs just with rooftop solar. But solar power decreased drastically in Colorado between 2013 and 2014, knocking Colorado from seventh place to 10th place in the United States for total annual solar power capacity per capita.

I don't think I'm alone in feeling that something is going wrong when Colorado is getting significantly less energy annually from the sun than Massachusetts is. We have enough sunshine in Colorado to meet our electricity needs, but we are lacking the good policies to keep us among the leading states for total solar energy capacity per capita.

Katie Otterbeck is solar power campaign organizer for Environment Colorado in Denver.

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